


send lazarus to my father's house

by loveandthetruth



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Destroy Ending, Fix-It, Found Family Feels, Gen, N7 Day, PTSD, Recovery, Team Dynamics, triad in progress
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-07
Updated: 2015-11-07
Packaged: 2018-04-30 11:04:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5161382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loveandthetruth/pseuds/loveandthetruth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"So the three of you disobeyed my direct order to evacuate Earth space."</p><p>"I take full responsibility for that, sir."</p><p>"I'm sure you do. And I'm sure you think you had a good reason for deserting your post during an active engagement, where you could have needlessly endangered not only yourselves but any body else who might have seen you and followed, as well as letting down the rest of your crew when they needed your leadership the most."</p><p>"Sir." Kaidan swallowed hard, his heart thumping painfully against his ribs. "Yes, sir."</p><p>"And did you find him?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	send lazarus to my father's house

Liara turned over, the plastic of the seat suddenly too hard, her whole body aching. She gave up on getting back to sleep and stood, stretching out the kinks and stiffness of too long spent sleeping in hospital chairs and looked around. Kaidan had finally, finally slumped, exhausted, across the benches and didn't stir when she draped a blanket over him. She had been sleeping in fits and starts for the past three days, never being able to rest for more than a handful of hours at a time, but Kaidan had somehow powered right through. She suspected that he had been stealing stimulants from the hospital storeroom to keep himself awake and had recently been found out and cut off by Dr Randolph. She was glad. She didn't have the heart to confront him about it herself. Time seemed to have become strangely stretched, she had already been used to Sol time on the Normandy but it felt like they had been here for weeks and the days were a blur in her mind. Every time they had finished one round of surgery, there seemed to be another problem and she wasn't sure how much more of this she could take.

It had been quiet here save for the arrival of two other patients and a team of medics. Communications had been non-existent for the first day or so following the firing of the crucible, which made any kind of broad coordination impossible. This suited them just fine, since Kaidan intended for them to stay under the radar. It also meant that if they hadn't left the Normandy when they had, Shepard would likely have been long dead by the time a serious search could be put together.

A strangely muffled shriek and bang made her jump. Kaidan too started out of sleep, immediately alert and looking around for the source of the noise. It came again and this time she could make out a series of pops against a background of crackles, almost like static. Fireworks, she realised belatedly. She felt more than saw Kaidan relax and push himself onto his feet, having recognised that there was no danger and shuffling towards a window, rubbing his eyes as he went. He leaned heavily against the frame, the cool glass against his forehead, and looked up at the sky through his lashes. Liara joined him and watched the colours sparkling across the sky.

"What does it mean?" she asked. "Are we celebrating already?"

"New year's eve." Kaidan looked a little dazed, whether from tiredness or awe she can't tell. "I hadn't even realised. Oh. Hey."

She was turning toward him when his lips caught the corner of her mouth. It was a brief, chaste thing but utterly unexpected. "A kiss?" was all she managed to say.

"It's tradition. Good luck." He gestured vaguely at the window and the lights, the fireworks. She thought she could hear laughter and the clink of glasses in another room.

"For the new year. I see." She leaned forward and kissed him, which surprised him as much as he had surprised her if the little laugh and flinch that she felt was anything to judge by. "I'm sorry, I assumed I was supposed to reciprocate. Was I-"

"No, that's fine. It's good." He huffed another small laugh and slumped back against the window. It could be that he was just humouring her but he looked relaxed for the first time in a long while, the tension gone from the corners of his eyes and mouth. "You know, I just realised this is the first time you've been on Earth. I wish you could've seen it at it's best."

Liara smiles and feels something unspool in her chest. "Actually, I think I have."

***

"Are you sure this is a good idea?"

"He deserves to know. Besides, I don't want him telling my mother I'm missing in action, not after dad."

"I know but - "

Steve didn't have any more time to argue when the door to Hackett's assigned office opened in front of them automatically. It should have taken them several minutes to get there from the landing zone but Kaidan managed to have them there in a few strides. The sooner this was over with the sooner he could get back to Shepard. It didn't feel right to leave him, not so soon, but this was important and the earlier Hackett was made aware of the situation the easier he could make it for all of them.

Hackett stood up when they entered, rising to his feet more in surprise than anything else. Steve had told him that he had ended up stranded with the shuttle when the Normandy evacuated but had left out anything else so Hackett wouldn't have been expecting to see Kaidan. It made him even more sure that he had done the right thing in coming here to clear up the situation. Now that they had officially demobilised he had more time than he really wanted to think about his father and he would never forgive himself if he went on letting his mother think he was dead too. He also suspected that Hackett himself was deeply wounded at the thought that he had sent Shepard on an impossible, suicidal task, even if Shepard would have been the very first to volunteer his life in exchange for the safety of all the galaxy.

They both stood to attention and saluted, which Hacket returned with the mildly confused grace of someone who knew his finely tuned plans are about to be complicated. Steve turned to leave, shooting Kaidan a look at was simultaneously  _good luck_  and  _I hope you know what you're doing_. Kaidan was less offended than he probably should have been, considering that he outranked Steve. Shepard had never cared about rank and had practically begged people to complain to him at every opportunity, something that had taken Kaidan a long time to get used to and now seemed hard to shake.

When the door closed behind Steve, Hackett reached forward across the table and shook Kaidan's hand before sitting down. "Major, as glad as I am to see you, what the fuck are you doing here?"

"Sir, I," he stalled for a moment and then steeled himself, clasping his hands behind his back and squaring his shoulders. "As ranking officer aboard the Normandy, I ordered Steve Cortez to take me back down  to Earth in the Kodiac. Dr T'soni volunteered to come with us."

"So the three of you disobeyed my direct order to evacuate Earth space."

"I take full responsibility for that, sir."

"I'm sure you do. And I'm sure you think you had a good reason for deserting your post during an active engagement, where you could have needlessly endangered not only yourselves but anybody else who might have seen you and followed, as well as letting down the rest of your crew when they needed your leadership the most."

"Sir." Kaidan swallowed hard, his heart thumping painfully against his ribs. "Yes, sir."

"And did you find him?"

"Yes, sir."

Kaidan struggled for a moment for the right words before Hackett finally took pity on him, stern expression softening as he gestured for Kaidan to sit. "Go on," he said, and Kaidan recognised the implied  _speak freely_.

"We found him on the second morning. We'd been in low earth orbit at the time of the crucible firing and Steve had a fair fix on Shepard's general location based on the source of his last transmission and the trajectory of the falling debris. He was...in a bad state, and I stabilised him as best I could." Kaidan wasn't surprised that people forget he was a trained medic given that he didn't see much use in that position in recent years. Dr Chakwas seemed to be the only person who knew, but possibly that was because he sometimes volunteered his help when she had her hands full, and was in fact pretty much the only reason she allowed him to leave the medbay.

"And then you took him to the nearest hospital where you continued to flout the chain of command."

"Well, it wasn't actually the nearest. Sir."

"Of course, what was I thinking, as if you would go somewhere where you might be caught and subject to a summary court-martial."

Kaidan shifted uncomfortably. He was fairly sure that Hackett was just having too much fun making Kaidan squirm and didn't actually have any intention to lock him up for a year or two. He took a deep breath and plowed on.

"We took him to a field hospital just outside the area of engagement and they moved him to a hospital further out." He left out the part where he emotionally blackmailed the attending doctor to keep Shepard's identity a secret. "He was in and out of surgery for three days before they declared him stable. It looks like something they did to him under Project Lazarus helped keep him alive but it was still touch and go for a while. That was new year's eve. He hasn't regained consciousness yet."

Hackett tapped his fingers against the desk and Kaidan forced himself to keep still under his steady, considering gaze. "I'm not declaring him KIA."

"Sir -"

"Out of the question." He held up a hand when Kaidan opened his mouth to argue. "You think he deserves to rest now, and I'm inclined to agree, but when the truth comes out, as you know it inevitably will, it won't go well for anyone. The fact of the matter is we don't even know if this is what Shepard would want."

Kaidan bit his tongue and nodded, because Hackett would clearly not be swayed by any argument that he could make.

"Shepard will be placed on the MIA list. Liara and yourself will be placed on mandatory leave. Steve has already requested and been granted limited duty." He paused then and seemed to deflate a little, slumping back in his chair. "How are you both?"

The answer was more slippery than Kaidan would have liked and every time he seemed to close in on how he felt, some other vague worry would take its place. "I don't know," he admitted finally. "We're getting by, I think. Liara's struggling more than I am, giving the fact that she seems to be stranded here with her homeworld destroyed, and we both have no idea how Shepard will pull through." He paused and added, mostly to himself, "Saving him was the easiest part."

"It's true that we have a long road ahead of us, but worst is truly over." He heaved a sigh and stood, Kaidan following, and shook his hand again. "It  _is_  good to hear from you, Major, you've taken a weight off my mind."

"What's next for us, sir?"

"We're planning to return the command to Vancouver, get the QECs repaired and attempt to reestablish communication, probably get some old satellites out of museums and back in orbit to help move things along on the ground. I understand your father owned a few orchards in the BC interior?"

_Owned_ . Kaidan ignored the sharp stab in his chest. "Yes, sir."

"You could move Shepard there if he's stable enough. The area is almost entirely undisturbed and it's close enough that you could come in should the Normandy get back in contact. And I want regular reports on your well being, Major, that's an order."

"Yes, sir. Thank you."

"I'm not the one that needs to be thanked." Hackett said as he saw Kaidan out.

He was overwhelmed so suddenly with the memory of Shepard's broken body in the rubble that he had to sit down in the corridor until he could breathe again. They did owe Shepard more than thanks. There was a debt here that Kaidan doesn't think anyone would ever be able to repay, but he was going to try even if it was the only thing he ever did with the rest of his life.

***

Things had not improved when Kaidan returned to the hospital. There were several nurses in the room with Shepard, and Dr Randolph was in the corridor with Liara. The hospital was getting a little crowded now that more patients had been moved in for long term care but Shepard was still covered in bandages and braces and listed as a John Doe, besides which was the fact that most people had their own problems to worry about, so Kaidan didn't think it could be because someone had found him.

Liara appeared distraught when he was near enough to see her face.

"What's happened?" He had to force himself to ask. He could see from the windows that the monitors were still ticking away evenly but that didn't necessary mean all was well.

"He had a seizure."

"A seizure," Kaidan repeated, trying to think quickly while forcing down the panic that was trying to bubble up and tell him how bad this could be. "A result of brain trauma?"

"It's more likely psychogenic." Dr Randolph didn't seem to be overly concerned, and for anyone who was not a medical professional it would be easy to mistake his manner for callousness but Kaidan could read the certainty that there was no immediate danger to Shepard. "We'll be running tests and keeping a close watch on him for the next few days but I'm confident that it's not post traumatic epilepsy.

Kaidan nodded, releasing the breath he was holding, and thanked the doctor, who gave as reassuring a smile as he could manage, before heading back into Shepard's room to speak to the attending nurses. Kaidan turned to Liara who was looking alarmingly glazed over, staring into the room with a vacant expression. He put his hand on her shoulder and she shuddered and sucked in a breath.

"It was my fault."

There was a sick lurch somewhere in his gut and his fingers clenched reflexively in her shirt. He led her back to the benches and sat her down. "Why do you say that?"

"I was talking to him. They said he would be able to hear and it might help him come around so I did and then..."

"What were you talking about?"

"I don't know. I was just. I said something about choices and...and that I wanted him to get better and that I wasn't angry and then he was making this awful choking sound and I turned around and he was seizing and the alarms were going off."

She could barely get the words out and Kaidan's heart broke at the sound of her voice. It was easy for him to forget how young she really is as an asari. He took her hands in his, chafed her clammy palms. "That doesn't mean it was your fault. Somatic symptoms are...complicated. He could have been having a nightmare, or remembering something that happened months or years ago. It could just be the accumulated stress. It might even be a one off. We can't know for sure what caused it."

"I shouldn't be here reminding him..." She broke off, shaking her head hard. "He doesn't need me here."

"He  _does_ , and so do I."

She seemed to relax a little but Kaidan wasn't sure that she really believed him. He put his arm around her shoulders and drew her in and kept telling her that everything was going to be alright until she fell into an exhausted sleep against him.

***

Liara knew that Kaidan was glad Dr Michel found them, comfortable enough with her, following his lengthy stay in Heurta Memorial after the fiasco on Mars, to transfer Shepard over to her care. Dr Randolph may have been an excellent doctor but Chloe was also an old friend.

Which was how the four of them came to be in Kaidan's family orchard in the Canadian country. They were in an old brick house that seemed unnervingly quiet after the bustle of the hospital. When Kaidan had said that it was safe enough to have Shepard moved she had been glad to be able to get away from the stark white cleanliness and the anonymous hallways, but now it seemed even worse.

She and Steve were standing just inside the doorway of  a room that had likely been an small office once but was now Shepard's. There was a desk next to the bed with a single monitor and an IV stand. Kaidan and Chloe were standing over Shepard and trying to coax some answers out of him and he was making it difficult by refusing to speak.

Dr Randolph had ruled out damage to his throat or vocal chords, neither as one of his initial injuries nor as a result of intubation. Sometimes Shepard would open his mouth and close it without saying whatever it was that he had wanted to say. The first few times this happened Liara could've sworn he seemed as frustrated with his seeming inability to speak as any of them. Another somatic symptom, Kaidan suggested.

This was the first time he had been conscious for more than fifteen minutes at a time. He seemed to be alert but exhausted and drawn. He didn't seem happy.

Chloe asked if he was in much pain and Shepard shook his head. She asked if he needed anything and Shepard shook his head again. Kaidan said something low that Liara couldn't hear and it made Shepard narrow his eyes at him.

Kaidan moved his hands then in a way that was clearly communicating something but didn't look like any hand signals she had ever seen from alliance military before. Shepard glared and then raised his hands to reply. His movements were much less fluid that Kaidan's, his fingers stiff and uncooperative. Kaidan didn't look pleased with Shepard's response and he seemed to be about to say something else when Shepard signed again and this time Liara could read his lips.  _I'm tired._  She could read Kaidan's expressions well enough by now that she knew he was thinking  _that makes two of us_  but he was still Kaidan so he didn't say that out loud.

All four of them withdrew into the hallway, Shepard tracking them with his eyes as they went.

Chloe sighed. "I'm sure Karin wouldn't have this much trouble with him."

They shared a small laugh but it was half hearted and short lived. It had been almost a month and there was still no word on the Normandy and no way to find out where they were or what state they might be in. They were all trying not to think that they could be lost forever.

"I should get back to the city," Chloe said. "I'll be coming by to check on him every other day and you are to call me the very minute you think something's wrong and I'll be here straightaway."

She raised her eyebrows and Kaidan gave her a dutiful, "Yes ma'am."

The three of them headed for the front door while Chloe had Kaidan repeat her instructions back to her again despite Steve doing his best to convince her that Kaidan knew what he was doing. Their voices died away while Liara went in the opposite direction, returning the peek around the door into Shepard's room.

She watched him blink at the ceiling, chest moving shallowly under the blankets and fingers opening and closing. He fell asleep but the tension seemed to stay in the lies of his body and Liara clung to the doorframe feeling useless and hollow.

***

Kaidan didn't bother calling her in, settling for taking dinner out to her instead. She had been strung out and distant for weeks, and Kaidan was starting to worry about her just as much as he worried about Shepard, but at least with him there were more practical things to worry about, things he could physically do to help. With Liara, he had to settle for just being there for her and hoping that she would speak to him eventually.

"Do you think we should invite people to see him or is it too soon?" he said eventually, pushing food around his plate, hungry but too bone tired to go through the motions of eating.

Liara had barely touched her dinner either. The plate was settled on the grass next to her and her arms were folded around her knees. "It could be good for him." She sighed. "If we  _do_ , do you think we should tell him first or should we just...let them surprise him."

He stabbed a piece of carrot and forced himself to chew it. Seeing as the reaper invasion focused mostly on the most densely populated areas, rural and agricultural centres  were more or less unharmed but getting food in and out of those places was still a minor logistical nightmare. His mother at least seemed to have listened to their warning and had been quietly squirreling supplies away should the worst come to pass. Ever since they had arrived, she had insisted that they make good use of it.  _A hot meal is good for morale_ , she said,  _and military rations are absolutely unacceptable for convalescents_  . She hadn't yet said much about it but Kaidan knew how much she was missing his father. He could hear it underneath everything she said and did.

He elbowed Liara gently and motioned to her plate, which she dutifully picked up and worked her way through her meal. They stacked their empty plates between them and sat for a little while together in silence. She looked past him to the window of the room where Shepard was sleeping and Kaidan followed her gaze even though neither of them could actually see him. "Maybe we should wait a little bit longer," she said.

"Yeah. Maybe he'll tell us if he's ready." They exchanged sardonic, half hearted smiles as if it was a joke. It was, but only in the most unfunny way. It had been more than a month since they found him in the wreckage of the crucible and in all that time he hadn't said a single word and even in sign language he had been monosyllabic in the extreme. It didn't help either that the extent of his injuries made it difficult for him to communicate with his hands.

Kaidan watched Liara out of the corner of his eyes.  She was gazing out at the orchard but she seemed distant and desperately unhappy. He wished he could say something reassuring, something to make her believe how glad he was to have her there, but he wasn't sure that he wouldn't just hurt her more than she was already hurting.

They were going to Alliance Command tomorrow to attempt to make contact with the Normandy for the first time. He hoped that they would be able to get through and that it would bring at least some measure of relief for her.

Kaidan stood and stretched. "Come on," he said, picking up the dishes and Liara stood and allowed herself to be manouvered into the house. "We'll do the dishes. Then I'll show you the orchard. Do you know much about apples? No?"

***

"Alright let's hope third time is in fact the charm because if I have to hear the word calibrate one more time I'm going to start taking Javik's advice regarding the proper use of airlocks."

The whole room burst into laughter and cheers. Even Liara had never imagined that she'd be so glad to hear Joker's voice that she would have tears in her eyes, but there she was and she felt like her heart would burst.

"Well hello Earth." Joker's smile was audible and there were similar whoops and cheers in the background. "Uh, it's amazing, I had a great joke lined up but it...seems to have evaporated. Weird. I'll get back to you with that. But first can someone please tell me the local time and date because it turns out the operating system is really fussy about that kind of thing."

It turned out that it had taken long enough for them to get the electronics back up that they had lost track of Sol time, disoriented by the bizarrely short days and long nights of the planet they had crashed on. They had a count of 73 days on what Joker had named Planet Jeff. It had been 42 Earth days since the Normandy had been ordered to evacuate, bringing them to February 7th 2187, 1733 UTC.

Hackett rolled his eyes, but his expression stayed stubbornly pleased. "Alright, what's your status."

"Aye aye, sir. Let's see....navigation online. Propulsion online. Weapons and shields online, although hopefully we don't have cause to use it. Comms now online. We have less fuel than I'd like. We should be able to make it but I'd feel a lot better if you could meet us a little way out for some ship to ship refueling. FTL drive is also online but I'm not leaving the system until I give it a thorough test. It would all be a lot easier if EDI..." Joker trailed off and cleared his throat. "Anyway, I'm estimating another week of tests and then if everything works we should be around two to two and a half months out."

There was a long pause and some shuffling in the background on the Normandy side, no doubt wondering whether they should wait to be told the news or if they should ask before the suspense becomes unbearable. Joker cleared his throat again. "So..?"

"Standby." Hackett gestured to the comm techs and administration staff to clear the room, waited until the door was firmly shut and locked behind them to say, "continue."

"Is Kaidan here?"

"I'm here," Kaidan answered. "Liara and Steve too. We're all fine. How are you guys holding up?"

"Starting to climb the walls a little to be honest. There doesn't seem to be any indigenous life so we didn't have to worry about being eaten at night or anything. And, you know, the lights are on and we have emergency rations and there's edible plants and filterable water so we've been okay. Just looking forward to not being stuck here."

"What were you saying about EDI?" Steve asked.

There was a heavy pause. "She's...well we're not sure what happened exactly. She kind of glitched out and just...didn't wake up."

"Must've been the blast from the crucible." Kaidan said, then sighed heavily. "We've been getting reports that the geth are shut down as well. The base code was more or less was preserved in the hubs and the quarians are debating what they want to do about it."

"Tali figured as much. She said the AI core shielding should have protected the code but she didn't want to poke around in there without some expert opinions, especially not while there was a ton of other things to fix, but she's sure it can all be recovered." He sucked in a breath. "So, the mass relays are dead, huh?"

"Damaged." Hackett corrected. "Initial survey says they're repairable, between what we already know about mass effect technology and what we've gained from the crucible research, it's just a question of time and resources."

"Well don't worry, in two months we'll be there and ready to save the galaxy all over again." There was another long pause and a voice in the background, Garrus probably, said something that they couldn't make out, before Joker finally says, "You did find him, right?"

"We did."

"And...he's alright?"

"He's a pain in the ass." Kaidan said, and just like that the tension broke and they laughed, all four of them in Alliance Command and all of them, no doubt crammed into the Normandy's bridge, with Joker.

"Well that's a good start. Hey, Kaidan, remember when he came down with Simian fever?" Kaidan's only response to this was to laugh so hard he almost keeled over, clutching Liara's arm, his shoulders shaking. "Man, that was a fun time."

"Okay, people," Hackett interrupted, as Kaidan tried to regain his professionalism. "I think it's time we give someone else a chance to get on the comms before you get carried away ruining Shepard's good name."

Joker promised to keep them appraised of their progress and Kaidan promised to keep them up to date with Shepard's recovery. As they left the comm centre to attend to their separate business, Liara felt lighter than she had for a long time.

***

As it turned out, Shepard's first visitor was a surprise to all of them when Steve returned from a supply drop with some unexpected extras.

"I hope you don't mind that I insisted on being brought over over," Jacob said, stepping carefully off the shuttle. "And, uh, I hope you don't mind that I brought someone along."

And sure enough, strapped to his chest was a baby carrier, and in it a baby. Kaidan stammered for a minute before looking at Steve and throwing up his hands.

"Emotional blackmail!" Steve huffed and turned around and started unloading crates. "I want it on record that I tried my best, but there's only so much a man can take."

"It's true." Jacob said, while his daughter cooed and rolled her neck to try and see the source of the commotion. "My time in Cerberus wasn't wasted, at least."

Kaidan sighed heavily. "Please tell me no one else knows yet."

"Scout's honour," Steve said.

"Well," said Jacob. "My wife knows. And, um, Miranda. And I kind of promised Jack I'd tell her if I heard anything, and you know she's going to kill me if I don't keep my word on that." He paused and narrowed his eyes. "Are you saying that you haven't told anyone that he's alive?"

"Hackett knows and the crew knows and as far as everyone else is concerned he's 'missing presumed dead' which is how I'd have liked it to stay." Kaidan sighed with his whole body, raked his hands through his hair, tugging hard. "Alright, fine, hell you're already here, and it is good to see you. How old is she?"

"Almost three months." Jacob unfastened the carrier and moved her into his arms with smooth, well practiced movements. "Think he's up for visitors?"

"Well, let's find out." Kaidan led them through the house. Liara had gone out to the orchards half an hour ago, saying little and looking unhappy and he wished she were with him now, his hands shaking a little when he knocked on the door before ducking his head around. "Unexpected guest for you, Shepard."

On cue, Jacob sidled out from behind Kaidan. Shepard tensed visibly, one hand frozen above a datapad, and then slowly, as if having difficulty remembering how, he made an effort to soften his face and waved. He didn't get quite so far as a smile.

"I thought you'd be glad to hear I didn't name her Shepard." Shepard scrubbed a hand over his face and Kaidan couldn't be sure, but there may have been a smile there after all. "And we got you a little gift."

He settled himself on the edge of the bed beside Shepard's thighs with a grace and familiarity that makes it easy to believe he didn't notice that the form of one leg under the blanket stopped abruptly at the knee. Jacob dropped a small flat disc onto Shepard's lap and waved his palm over it. A holographic keyboard came to life, making his daughter squeal and give a bright gummy grin at the soft blue glow.

Kaidan didn't know if Shepard actually played, but remembered vividly the grand piano in Shepard's apartment at the Citadel. Shepard seemed to hesitate as well but reached to touch a key and it sounded beautifully true to the real thing. He drew a breath and held it, and Kaidan was just wondering if he should say something when he saw Liara's familiar silhouette approaching through the window.

"I need to speak to Liara a minute. I'll be right back."

He was almost out the door, when Jacob abruptly stood and placed his daughter in Shepard's lap. Shepard looked bemused but closed him arms automatically, and very gently, around her, letting her settle with her back to his chest. "I need a word with her too actually," Jacob said, shoving Kaidan out of the door before he can protest.

"Are you sure that was a good idea." Kaidan said, as soon as they were outside.

Liara, presumably warned by Steve about Jacob's appearance, joined them, lip caught between her teeth. "Is everything alright?"

"She'll be fine," Jacob said. "And I think it'll be good for him. A couple of minutes with another human being who doesn't know he's supposed to be a hero."

"I guess." Liara said, trying not to lean towards the window. "What did you think?"

"He looks really..."

"Yeah."

Jacob is quiet for a minute. "Well, you know how he is. He's not going to give up. He doesn't have it in him. It's just gonna take time, you know?"

"Yeah." Kaidan rubbed the back of his neck, feeling suddenly very tired.

The three of them filed quietly back into the room. Shepard was playing a halting tune one handed on the keyboard, seemingly not bothered by the fact that Jacob's daughter had the cuff of his shirtsleeve in her mouth and was drooling merrily into it. He eased his arm from around her when Jacob moved to pick her up.

"Best get you back to your mom before she starts worrying," Jacob said. "It's good to see you, Shepard. I'll come around again."

Shepard nodded, perhaps reflexively. Before Jacob turned to leave, he signed  _what's her name?_  and, again, Jacob was good at hiding his surprise. "Sera."

He mouthed the word, as if trying to learn the shape of it on his tongue, or maybe trying to see how far he could get the sound out, and then,  _thank you_.

***

There was a knock on his door and a familiar voice called out, "Anybody home?"

Before he could answer, Miranda ducked her head around the door. "Hello."

It wasn't the hello of someone who was walking on eggshells around him, or of someone who had too much invested in his emotional wellbeing, which made it easier to smile and wave her in.

"You're here alone?" she asked. "Does Major Alenko expect to this house to be standing when he gets back?"

He opened his mouth automatically, and then worked his throat a little and willed something to come out, but Miranda waved a hand. "You don't have to on my account. Jacob explained."

_You can sign?_  Shepard asked, immediately relieved. His hands hurt a little less now, but it was still difficult. In the end it was just a matter of how badly he wanted a regular conversation and how much effort he was willing, or able, to make at the time. Today had a been a good enough day to try.

"I'm rusty, but I'm sure I remember enough." She ignored the chair and sat on the edge of the bed. "I'm glad you made it."

Shepard couldn't help but smile at her directness. No one else had actually said it out loud, though there had been enough instances of glowing looks in his direction that he knew it.  _You did too good a job._

"A good job? Well, I know a Class-F fighter doesn't pack much punch against Reapers but I wanted to do my part."

_No_ , he says.  _With me._

"Oh. That." He realised then that she wasn't aware of how bad things were when he was found, and probably also hadn't realised the full consequences of how well they did their job when they brought him back to life in the first place, but she recovered quickly. She straightened up and preened a little. "Chronic overachiever, what can I say?"

That got a quiet chuckle out of Shepard, and then immediately a pain in his chest. He curled forward a little to relieve the pressure, his breath coming a little short. Miranda reached out and put a hand on his back. "Is there something I can do?"

Shepard shook his head and she waited until he could sit up and breathe properly.  _Rejecting the lung_ , he explains.

"Where are Kaidan and Liara?"

_Emergency call_. Usually Dr Michel would be here to keep an eye on him, but he insisted that he would be alright for a couple of hours. Kaidan had grumbled about him being too pushy and maybe someone should take that wheelchair away from him, but he understood that Shepard needed some space.  _I was only going to sleep anyway._

"Well," she said, pulling back the covers for him. "Don't stop on my account."

She made an insistent gesture and Shepard rolled his eyes and wheeled up next to the bed. It wasn't his first time in a wheelchair so it hadn't taken him long to get used to the motions again, but he put extra effort into not fumbling in front of a guest.

"So," she said, when he was tucked in and the wheelchair collapsed and parked in the space between the bed and the desk. "How are you really?"

He thought for a minute and then gave up and just shrugged. He didn't know how he was. He hadn't really known it since the moment he woke up. The only thing he knew was that he seemed to be alive and he didn't seem to have a reason.

"Did you not want to survive?" She asked, and because she was good at this, she sounded believably casual, as if they were talking about the weather.

_Don't._  He didn't feel as angry at the question as he would have if Kaidan had asked, because Shepard wouldn't be able to be honest without hurting him, but it was no less frustrating.  _I don't know, okay? Leave it._

"Okay." She yawned suddenly and stretched and seeing it made him feel twice as tired than he had been five minutes ago. "I just thought, you know. If you need a lung that's perfect match for you..."

_That's not a good idea._

"Why not? It's entirely plausible that there could be more than one clone. I could find them."

Shepard tried to convey all the skepticism he could muster in his answering glare. He didn't have the energy to sign all the reasons that was a terrible idea. The fact that they had limited communications and limited space travel, and he would have to wait for her longer than he would have actual time. They'd find him a better match in Vancouver before she'd even left the solar system.

"Well, why shouldn't I? Are you saying you doubt my skills as an agent?"

Because you're being ridiculous, he didn't say.  _What happened to living a normal life?_

"I thought we agreed that wasn't possible for people like us?"

_What_. Shepard didn't have to think hard to recall their evening in the casino.  _No. I said we just need a little practice._

"Oh, that's right," she mused, glancing at him sidelong. "That  _is_  what you said, isn't it."

_I. Oh._  He slumped back on the pillows.  _You are so devious._

She grinned. "My time with Cerberus wasn't wasted."

_Fine. If you try, I'll try._

"Deal." She stood abruptly. "You should sleep now. My work here is done."

_You're leaving?_  Shepard felt surprisingly disappointed for someone who had just been very cleverly conned.

"Not yet. It's a nice place, I'll wander around a bit while I wait for your folks and we can catch up. Maybe I'll still be here when you wake up." She stopped at the door and looked back while Shepard shuffled down onto his back. "Jack sends her regards."

_Oh._  Shepard blinked sleepily, hand movements getting a little sloppy.  _You didn't bring her?_

Miranda laughed. "She said she'd swing by when you're better able to defend yourself."

That, Shepard thought, is probably a good idea.

***

He caught Shepard in front of the mirror one day as he was walking through the house, bedroom door ajar, turning his face to see the scars and then stepping back and stripping off his shirt, movements a little stilted still, and then his pants, until he was standing naked in front of the glass, his hands still at his side and his face closed off, unreadable.

Kaidan looked too, his throat going tight. His body was marred by scars. There weren't enough supplies to go around so only the worst or most obvious ones had been grafted and some of them still looked painful and raw. His left arm and right leg were noticeably mangled, running through with cybernetics to support the damaged muscle, his left leg from mid thigh down replaced by the most basic prosthetic model available, no synthetic skin, because he moved himself to the bottom of the waiting lists. There were surgical scars all over him, degradable biopolymers shoring up his ribcage but old fashioned metals in his jaw, his spine, his right hip and thigh. He had needed a new lung twice, and a pair of kidneys early on, and underneath it all his heart, held together with the bare hands of everyone who loved him and couldn't let him go.

He wasn't sure how long they both stood there until Shepard saw Kaidan in the mirror and turned. He seemed to shrink a little, his already too thin frame hunching in, and Kaidan couldn't bear it. "Shepard." He didn't turn back, kept his eyes on his own hands as he pulled his pants up and tied off the cord, fingers fumbling only a little. " _John_ ."

It took only two strides to have him boxed in against the mirror. Kaidan could see the flinch away from the cold glass, and then the little flinch back away from Kaidan.

"I was just-" Shepard bit his lip, looked away and Kaidan closed the distance between them, pressed himself flush against him.

  
"I love you," he said and Shepard's mouth under his was pliant, unresisting. He put his hands on his chest and felt three different kinds of scar under his fingers. "I love you." Kaidan would put his hands everywhere, would kiss every bit of his torn and broken body until Shepard believed it again. "I love you. I love you."

***

He couldn't sleep. It had been days since he had a good night's sleep and he explained it away to Kaidan as too much time spent in a coma.  _What's the opposite of sleep debt?_  he'd asked, but he knew that wasn't it. Ever since Miranda's visit he had been haunted by the promise he had made, however flippant he had felt at the time. He couldn't remember ever not having a purpose, not having a reason to keep putting one foot in front of the other even when he felt like he was going to fold in on himself. He thought of Kaidan, and Liara. He wished love were enough of a reason, he wished everything was just that simple.

A low light burned on the desk and a data pad lay in his lap but the words stopped making sense hours ago so he turned off the lamp and settled for staring out of the window. This was the longest he'd ever been grounded on any planet in his entire life. As he looked out at the stars, he tried not to think that he would never be able to go back out there where he belongs.

He was startled when the door opened and the light from the hallway was so bright that it burned and he couldn't make out the figure that entered before the door closed. His fingers reached for the lamp and the room was illuminated by dim blue light. His mother stood in front of the door and his heart stuttered in his chest.

He had known that she was alive of course; Kaidan had told him as soon as word came through. She didn't seem at all different from the last time he saw her in person five, or maybe six, years ago when he'd surprised her on her birthday. She moved towards the bed and his face broke open into a grin before he could control it, and then he froze.

The scars in his jaw pulled when he smiled, he could feel it now, and he raised a hand to them, suddenly self conscious. His eyes fell to his scarred hands then too and the patchwork of grafts and reconstructed muscle of his arms. It had been too hot for a shirt and his arms folded reflexively around himself. He didn't know how much of it she could see in the low light but he knew what he looked like. He didn't want her to leave, but he couldn't help but wish she wasn't here.

She came to sit next to him anyway and it was a single bed so he knew she could feel the sharpness of his bones showing through his skin when she leaned against him. When she raised a hand he did his best not to flinch but she didn't touch his face, instead closing her fingers around his ear and tugging just hard enough to hurt and he yelped, indignant, " _Mom_."

She smiled at him then and he had to cover his face with his hands when it screwed up of it's own accord, a sob hitching out of his chest. He curled in until his head fell onto her lap and stayed there and cried like the seven year old boy he had been when they told him he'd never see his father again and she stroked her hand through his hair until he fell asleep.

***

Shepard wheeled himself with practiced ease into the kitchen, helped along by the fact that Kaidan had taken the doors off their hinges. It was warm enough now that the doors were almost always open anyway, propped open with old bricks or bags of flour, and in the end Kaidan just took them out completely to keep the way clear for the wheelchair that was only just narrower than the hallway itself.

Liara had very briefly embarrassed herself when they had first moved here and she hadn't realised that the doors had to be opened manually. Kaidan only laughed a little and explained that the house was very old and that when his parents bought the orchards his father had found it in a terrible state and had wanted it renovated with all the modern conveniences of the 22nd century but his mother insisted that they keep it exactly as it was originally designed. Shepard didn't comment on the change although it seemed to be a relief for him not to have to reach to open the door.

Kaidan seemed to particularly enjoy making breakfast, so they made it a point, now that Shepard was well enough, to eat together. Kaidan and Liara amused themselves with aimless chatter and sometimes Shepard watched them with an attentive and amused smile. Other times he was a million miles away. Despite Kaidan's determined casualness, she knew that he worried about Shepard as deeply as she did, but he had more patience than she did and his faith was less fragile than hers.

They were talking about the latest news on the state of Thessia, Kaidan having asked if Liara has had any updates from her father when Shepard unexpectedly asked, "They repaired the comm buoys?"

There was a sudden startled silence where they both processed the fact that Shepard had spoken for some other reason than to answer a direct question. He spoke more than he used to but still relied on sign a lot, particularly when he needed to ask for help, and he had notably avoided conversation about the aftermath of the war.

It must have shown on their faces because Shepard seemed to have realised what he said, and in fact that he said it at all, and for a moment it looked like the walls are going to go back up around him but Kaidan found his voice.

"Not exactly. Ships have been starting to go out and make repairs. It's been a bit of a balancing act trying to get enough buoys repaired to get the comm corridors back up without unbearable time lag while not having to repair all of them. There just aren't resources enough for it."

"Oh," Shepard said. He glanced at Liara and then away quickly. She realised she'd been staring. "Well, that's good anyway. We all have to start somewhere."

"Yeah." Kaidan's voice was thick with emotion and he cleared his throat before he continued. The significance of what Shepard just said was not lost on either of them. "Well, that's civilian communications anyway. The quantum entanglement communicator pairs between the main council races and us have all been repaired. There's a lot of run around because we can't communicate as a whole group together but it's reliable. The council have actually started to set up a system for forwarding messages through to help people get in touch with family and friends stranded on other planets. It's how Liara got in touch with her dad."

"Impressive. So," he said mildly, "what is the word on Thessia?"

They both looked at Liara, although Shepard only out of the corner of his eyes. "Um." Kaidan nudged her under the table, his knee bumping hers, a gentle encouragement to tell the truth, only mildly varnished if necessary. "Well. Survivors are all accounted for across the galaxy and next of kin notified. They're trying to decide if they should try to rebuild on Thessia or move the central infrastructure to Illium, at least until such time when the galactic economy is stabilised."

Shepard nodded vaguely. Liara and Kaidan stole a glance and they both understand that they'd get no more from him today and Liara wrung her hands under the table until Kaidan reached under and covered her hands with one of his own. She looked up and he gave her a faint, fond smile.

***

"I don't know what I was looking for." Shepard said days later and at first Kaidan didn't know what he was talking about until Shepard said, "In the mirror."

Kaidan didn't say anything, didn't know what to say, but he stopped shaving and turned around, cold foam still caked to his neck, so Shepard knew he was listening.

Shepard swallowed heavily, sucked in a jagged breath. "It wasn't the scars. I guess it was a little. I can't go back to the military like this and it's not like I want to, I'm not sure I want to, but it just. It seems like everything's over. But it doesn't feel over. I can't -" His voice broke and crumpled suddenly until he was on the floor in the doorway of the bathroom, back pressed to the wood of the frame. Kaidan carefully wiped down his face while Shepard took a deep breath, and then another, and another. "Everything was simple before. I miss. I want to go back and I can't but I don't know how to go on."

The sound of his unsteady breathing seemed to echo off the tile and glass as Kaidan lowered himself to sit opposite Shepard, whose eyes jumped from Kaidan's face to the space above his shoulder, and back and away again. "I don't understand what I'm supposed to do." He admitted finally, his voice an empty husk of a thing. "I don't understand anything anymore."

"You're here." Kaidan says. "I'm here. That's a good start." He didn't reach out, stamped down on the urge and waited this time, until Shepard half crawled and half fell against his chest. His hair was long enough now that Kaidan could tangle his fingers in it. "We'll figure the rest out along the way. Can you believe that?"

Kaidan couldn't see his face, but he nodded and the shivers eased off. "I believe you."

***

 

Liara settled next to him when he pulled back the quilt for her, slipping off her shoes and tucking her feet under, grateful for the warmth. It was summer but there had been a sharp chill in the air these past few days. Shepard was warm next to her as well, pressed against her from shoulder to elbow to hip as he pulled out the holo-keyboard to its full length.

There had been a great improvement in his coordination lately and even though it was still difficult for him to learn new pieces, he didn't get as frustrated by it as he used to. There were still abrupt cramps in his arms as well, when he made a movement too quickly or when he'd been playing for too long, that were sharp enough to make him gasp and for his eyes to water. When she was as close to him as she was now she could feel the pain snap through his whole body, an awful and unavoidable reminder that there was no way for him to just turn around and become the person he was before. Shepard was changed, inside and out, in many ways but every day there were more and more flashes of his old courage, his old easy going humour, his faith, his good company.

He started playing a tune and Liara recognised it instantly and smiled as she began playing alongside. The first thing she ever taught him and Shepard's favourite, not least because he knew it so well now. It seemed like a whole other life, their time together at his apartment, but she felt that it must be a good sign that he could remember it without being hurt by it, even as the detritus of the Citadel was caught in the Earth's orbit. It had only been his home for a very short while but it still made tears prick in her eyes to think of it destroyed. She wondered if he missed Anderson and then suddenly thought of Kahlee, that maybe someone should tell her that Shepard was alive and that maybe the two of them could talk, it might be good for them to share stories about Anderson. The relief she felt talking to Shepard about Benezia was still palpable even now, and remained a treasured memory.

Wrapped in her own thoughts, Liara didn't even realise that he'd stopped playing until his hand closed over hers, his thumb brushing across the back of her knuckles. The skin was scarred and the movement stiff from broken bones, but the weight of his hand and the familiarity of the gesture was still enough to make her heart lurch in her chest.

"I'm sorry," he said. His voice was different now too, a quiet rasp, uncertain where he had always been confident and wry. She didn't know if this was just from lack of use, or the fact that hearing his own voice was more of a reminder of his being alive than he could bear. "I'm sorry that I couldn't save Thessia."

"Shepard." A muddle of images and feelings swelled up; the beacon at the Temple of Athame, the realisation of what it meant, her righteous but no less hypocritical anger towards Javik after. She leaned forward and kisses him in a rush, his mouth just as familiar and warm as his hand, and felt immediately guilty when his lips parted reflexively under hers but let the moment go on a little longer anyway. "But you did. You did."

***

 

"It's not exactly 'back before you know it' but I guess it'll do."

Shepard made a show of rolling his eyes as he turned around to face Joker, who limped into the room with his arms around a couple of stacked boxes. He opened his mouth and for a moment it seemed like he wanted to say something, like something was about to fall out of his mouth with the same ease as it would have six months ago, but the moment passed without a word.

He smiled anyway and wheeled forward to take the boxes from Joker, setting them on his lap and and taking them over to the desk. Joker shuffled along behind him and sat in the empty chair before unpacking one of the boxes, taking out a wire cage. A tiny, whiskered nose appeared from the small shelter in the centre of it.

"You know, he seems a lot happier down here than he ever did on the Normandy. Space hamster, my ass. I couldn't say what exactly makes a space hamster, but if he doesn't like being on my pinnacle of a ship he's obviously not one. I guess you were sold a dud. They must've have not known who you were. And speaking of my pinnacle of a ship, I thought you might be missing it."

From a second box, Joker pulled out, with the appropriate flourish, a scale model of the Normandy and didn't waste any time clambering awkwardly up onto the bed to hang it from the ceiling. Shepard unlatched the door to the cage, fumbling only a little, and rested his hand inside. The hamster twitched his nose and quested forward until he burrowed under Shepard's fingers.

"I don't know if you ever named him. I've been calling him Conrad."

That startled a laugh out of Shepard, and then he couldn't seem to stop, the odd, choked sound muffled into the desk when he buried his face in the crook of one arm, the other still in the Conrad's cage. Joker left the bed to stand by him, resting a heavy hand on the back of his neck until Shepard went quiet.

***

 

Kaidan was washing the dishes. There was a dishwasher but he said he liked doing it, that it relaxed him, and besides there were only three of them, or two and a half of them as he sometimes joked, Shepard's appetite not being what it used to be. So he was standing at the sink with his hands in soapy water when Liara finally blurted out, "I kissed him."

From where she stood could see his face in the twilight from the window so she could see the momentary confusion on his face, almost ready to ask who she was talking about, and she could see the realisation hit, his mouth opening and closing, his hands going still. He turned his head to look at her and she couldn't tell if he was waiting for her to speak of if he just couldn't find the words to voice his anger, his disappointment.

Liara clutched desperately for something to say that could possibly express how sorry she was, how much she regretted doing it, how much she wished she weren't here. It was Kaidan who broke the silence.

"I'm not angry."

She must have looked to be in quite a state because he seemed to mean it, his expression more concerned than he had any right to be, given what she just said. "You should be. I shouldn't have -"

"Liara."

"How can you not be angry? Don't you understand? It wasn't an accident. I knew what I was doing when I -" She slapped a hand over her mouth to muffle the sobs that seemed to have formed in her chest suddenly. Her vision blurred with tears and there was too much whirling around in her head for her to think clearly; she didn't know what she was doing here any more, she wasn't sure if she ever did.

"Please don't be upset." She thought he was shaking, it was hard to tell through the tears, as he reached out a wet hand but she backed out of his reach and he gripped the edge of the worktop instead. "I don't want to you feel bad. Please believe that. Look, I... I understand. I know everything is a mess right now. And I know he still cares so much for you. He never stopped. I care about you." She could hear his breath coming ragged now, the words spilling out of him. "This is what we have. Is it so bad? I don't want you to feel like you shouldn't be here, like you couldn't have a home here. You're a part of his life just as much as I am, maybe even more. And God help me, maybe I'm just selfish but I don't want to do this on my own. I can't. I know this isn't...I know it's. How can I make this work? What can I do?"

He was looking at her with a horrible desperation, his chest heaving like he just ran across the breadth of the country looking for answers, as if she had any more answers than he did. She didn't think she had heard anyone beg her for anything before, but she could hear it in his voice now. "Liara. Tell me."

"I have to go." Her entire body was trembling but she managed to force her feet to move.

"Liara, please."

"I have to go."

***

 

It was Shepard who suggested the walk in the orchard and if Kaidan had suspected that Shepard would still be so skittish and tense, he never would have said yes.

The branches were becoming heavy with fruit but there were trees further into the orchard that were stubbornly holding onto their blossoms. He had wanted to go all the way out there and show them to Shepard, just like he had shown Liara, but now he thought that he was going to have to be the one to say that they should go back, that maybe Shepard shouldn't be out here.

Shepard seemed to be moving forward through sheer stubbornness. He didn't seem to have a particular goal, his eyes not seeming to fall on anything in particular and focused on the vague middle distance, but he still moved with a rigid determination as if he was pushing forward through waist deep water. Occasionally he would put out a hand to steady himself, digging his fingernails into bark, and then hauled his foot forward another step.

"Maybe we should head back."

Shepard turned to him slowly, and then snapped abruptly to his left, a whole body flinch, staring at something behind Kaidan, but when he turned, there was nothing but more trees in the encroaching dark. A scuffle drew his attention back to Shepard who, half stumbling over his own feet, fell back against the tree, breathing hard.

It was hard to not rush to his side, but Kaidan made the effort, knowing not to startle him any more than he already was. It was only a few measured steps but when he drew near, Shepard was already at least halfway back down to calm.

"I'm alright," he said, voice low, a small rueful smile fixed in place.

"What did you see?"

He flinched, but only a little, small enough that Kaidan could only see it because he was looking. "Nothing," he said and then sighed. "It's nothing, just. Bad dreams."

Kaidan managed not to cross him arms over his chest, to keep his posture non threatening, but only just. "Shepard, why did you ask to come out here?"

He must not have been able to keep his voice as clear of his displeasure because Shepard looked up at him, the most direct look he'd given in Kaidan couldn't even remember how long. Shepard looked a little hurt and more than a little defensive.

"I had to. It's been." He caught himself, shuts his mouth so fast that a word got caught, as if someone had clapped a hand over his mouth to cut him off midsentence. He chewed on his lip and shifted awkwardly for a moment before starting over. "I could see it from the window. The orchard. And I had these dreams, from before and....it frightened me, knowing what was out here. I just had to face it."

Kaidan closed his eyes and forced himself to exhale. "Alright. Alright, I'm still mad. You shouldn't have kept that from me, but we can talk about that later. For now -" He gestured broadly back to the house and began walking.

"Wait. Not yet."

"Shep-"

"Just a little further. I can-"

"Shepard. You're bleeding." It was not until Kaidan pointed that Shepard bent his arm so he could see the way his elbow and the back of his forearm was scraped raw. He allowed a small, chagrined  _oh_ and Kaidan rolled his eyes. "We can come back tomorrow."

This made Shepard narrow his eyes, searching for the other shoe, although he did start back up towards Kaidan. "Really?"

"We can come back tomorrow if you eat a full breakfast."

Shepard nodded, falling into step beside him, and then with almost his old thoughtful nonchalance said, "Will you be making it though, because-"

Kaidan did clap his hand over Shepard's mouth then, arm tight around his shoulders to reach. He could feel the broad smile under his palm and the answering hand that pressed between his shoulder blades was warm and steady.

***

 

Kaidan only complained a little these days when Shepard insisted on going out on his own, more out of habit than anything else. He was getting stronger every day, felt a little less likely to unravel when someone touched him, and he knew Kaidan had noticed it, knew that he was secretly pleased. So Kaidan complained that Shepard was a terrible patient and Shepard complained that Kaidan was an overbearing nurse and Kaidan told Shepard to fuck off and Shepard gave Kaidan the finger and it all felt so normal they might as well have been back on the Normandy.

So he was alone in the orchard when he heard footsteps in the soft soil behind him and he had to tell himself that he never heard footsteps in his dreams therefore this was not a dream. He was awake. He was  _fine_.

"There you are." It was Tali's voice. "Kaidan said we'd find you here but so far we've found trees. Lots of trees."

"An orchard right behind the house. That's a security hazard, you know."

"Please don't booby trap my boyfriend's orchard."

"I'm only concerned for your safety, Shepard."

"I'm plenty safe now that I'm not standing next to you."

"Wow, that is  _not_ how I remember the past year. How hard did you hit your head?"

Tali laughed. "Liara said you'd got your sense of humour back."

This surprised Shepard. It had been troubling him, the way she sometimes just disappeared for a while, some days seeming perfectly happy and others completely withdrawn. He had been missing hearing her voice over breakfast. He wanted to ask Tali what else Liara had said but Garrus, not one to miss an opportunity, spoke first.

"I'm not sure he had one in the first place."

"That's rich coming from a turian. You wouldn't know a sense of humour if it blew half your face off."

"Oh so that's why you blew up the citadel. You were jealous of my scars."

"Are you two going to go on  _all_ day?"

Shepard laughed. "Making up for lost time I guess. How have you been? Enjoying Earth?"

"It's a beautiful place when we get a break," Tali said. "There's so much going on. They're building new satellites for the earth network and they're started to work through the wreckage in the orbit to mine for materials to recycle. They've even decided to upgrade the comm buoys with technology from the crucible specs while we're repairing them anyway."

"And any spare minute she has, Tali has a team of technicians helping her put EDI back together."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. It's going pretty well. She spoke to us yesterday. She...doesn't seem quite herself. I think she has to go through the process of developing her personality again."

Shepard had a fair idea how that felt. "It's still a good start. I'm sure it'll all come back to her."

"That's what we're hoping. It looks like Legion's upgraded code had been better preserved on Rannoch that EDI's had been on the Normandy, maybe because there was just more of it between all the geth units. Admiral Koris is sending data packets whenever the comm channels are clear to help speed the process along." She paused and looks out through the leaves at the blue expanse of sky. "I think Legion would be glad to know he's still helping."

He turned sharply then, distracted by a flash of something between the trees, but when he turned his head to look he couldn't see anything. There was less of an ache in his chest than he expected, although he still couldn't quite figure out what he felt.

"Shepard? Are you alright?"

"Yeah," he said and it wasn't a surprise that it felt true. He turned back to Tali's masked, but effortlessly familiar, face and smiled. "Just a trick of the light."

***

 

They were in the orchard, helping with the apple harvest. It was a beautiful day and the sky was bluer than Liara had ever seen, almost the colour of Shepard's eyes. They were not quite all here, Steve had already taken a shuttle full of fruit to the sorting house and Joker had called to say he was on his way back from dropping off his load. Garrus could be heard still needling Kaidan to let him set up a perch and snipe the apples right off the trees, promising that he wouldn't damage any of them. Kaidan was just as adamant that it wasn't going to happen. Jack was there too with her biotic students. Occasionally, she would throw apples at Shepard.

"Hey. Stop that," Kaidan said.

"I'm just testing his reflexes!" Jack retorted, posture aggressive but voice full of laughter.

It was true. She always called out a heads up as she lobbed an apple at Shepard's head and more often that not he had managed to throw up a biotic shield in time to deflect it. He once threw one back but it missed by some distance and hit James in the back.

Liara laughed and Shepard turned a broad smile to her. It's so good to see the light in his eyes again, Liara thought

"It's nice to hear you laugh," Shepard said, and Liara's grasp slipped, the biotic bubble full of apples collapsing. The apples tumbled to the ground and Liara fell to her knees to collect them back up, face feeling suddenly hot. Shepard dropped to a crouch next to her, then winced and sat down on the grass proper, his wounded leg stretched out and his other pulled gently to his chest. He held the basket out to her. "Something I said?"

"No. I'm..." Liara said, too quickly and then had to scramble for something to say that isn't  _I'm fine_  even though she was fine. Everything was fine.

Before she could come up with something more convincing Shepard caught her hand, still moving automatically to fill the basket even as her mind stalled uselessly. "Is this about the kiss?"

"No," she said again, a complete lie this time. She sighed. "Look, I already told Kaidan and I -"

"I know. He told me."

Of course he did. "What did he tell you?" Liara wasn't sure why she asked. Curiousity mostly, but maybe also a glimmer of hope that she didn't know she had been keeping alive.

"He said that you told him and that he thinks that you feel guilty about it and that maybe you shouldn't. He said that you deserve to be here. I agreed with him."

Liara's breath came short. She kept her eyes down. The grass was very green, she noticed, and the apples a very glossy red and her fingers a very deep blue around them. Her other hand was still in his and she tried to pull away but couldn't quite manage it. She tried to say something, but all she could manage was his name.

"Liara, please look at me." She didn't look at him and he lowered his body until he was laid out on the grass, his face upside down and only just in her peripheral vision. He didn't let go of her hand. "I understand if you want to leave but I want you to know that you don't have to. And I don't want you to feel bad about staying but I do want you to stay. You  _do_ have a place here with us. We want you to stay, if you want to."

She was looking at him now. Shepard's face was shadowed by the tree and was as open and stupidly, insufferably sincere as he had always been. She felt strangely weightless, and as if there was nothing in the entire universe besides them here and now. She did want to stay, but was that enough? She wasn't wholly certain that she believed it, but she was certain that Shepard did, and Shepard had always been able to will the impossible into being. Shepard's enduring faith was the only reason any of them were alive right now.

"I do want to stay," she said, slowly.

Shepard blinked up at her, hearing the cautious tone in her voice. "Okay. And then?"

"And then...we'll figure the rest out as we go. After all, we have time."

"We do." Shepard smiled then, bright as the sun, and the effect wasn't even ruined by the apple that sailed between them and landed square on his nose.

***

"They're talking about retiring the Normandy." Kaidan said.

Shepard almost choked on his brandy. It was a bottle of Serrice Ice from Karin, albeit with a strict one glass limit. "That's a travesty."

"Are they going to dismantle it or repurpose it?" Liara asked.

"Put it in a museum probably. Could you imagine them taking it apart? Joker would riot."

There was a silence while they all instinctively looked skyward. The night was clear and had the crispness of an early winter and the stars were as bright as they would have been if they had been up there themselves.

"We could steal it," Liara said mildly, as if suggesting a movie to watch after they head back inside.

"Steal the Normandy from a museum?" Kaidan scoffed and then cocked his head. "Well."

Shepard resisted the urge to giggle into his glass. "We could be pirates."

"I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that."

He whirled around, almost falling off his chair. Kaidan and Liara got to their feet with much more dignity, which was hardly fair considering they'd had more to drink than he had. Hackett was leaning against the back door, looking strange in civilian clothes. "Why don't you nice law abiding citizens come and join us inside."

"Us?" Shepard looked suspiciously over his shoulder where Liara was failing to look innocent. Kaidan didn't even bother to pretend.

He put one hand between Shepard's shoulder blades and took Liara's hand with the other and led them both inside where they were greeted with such a heartfelt, ear splitting, "surprise!" that Shepard took a step back and nearly tripped the off the back step.

"Alright, careful now," Garrus said stepping out of the crowd and raising his hands as if to ward them off. "Shepard's a little delicate these days."

Shepard, standing close behind him and steadying himself with one hand on Kaidan, hooked his ankle around Garrus' leg and shoved him forward, sending him tumbling into Samantha. "What was that, I didn't quite hear you."

There was just enough room for the three of them in this house, so Shepard was more than a little stunned that they all managed to cram themselves in here. Wrex looked like he might inadvertently knock down a wall if he moved two steps to the left. "I'm not under house arrest here, you know," he said. "You could have called me to Vancouver."

"We can't give you a house warming present if we're not in your house, loco," James said and pointed over his shoulder and Shepard turns.

Along the back wall of the living area was an empty rectangular frame and Tali reached up to touch the side. The frame flickered and filled with the picture they'd taken at the party in Anderson's apartment.

The room fell utterly silent, each one of them seemingly holding their breath. Shepard just looked at the picture for a long time, trying to think of something to say, anything.

"Shepard?" Liara was standing close to his elbow.

He cleared his throat. "It's good. Great. But...I don't know. It could do with an update don't you think?"

It was a tight fit. They all pressed up together under the picture in three ranks while Tali conjured up a tech drone to take the picture before squeezing in beside Garrus.

"Everybody say Normandy!"

**Author's Note:**

> The Lazarus referred to in the title and the Lazarus that was raised from the dead are in fact two separate people in separate stories but both references feel appropriate.


End file.
